Man Up

I don’t buy bodybuilding magazines often (though I do have a subscription to The New Yorker) but a friend gave me the September 2010 issue of MuscleMag because it’s got my favourite bodybuilder, the illustrious Hidetada Yamagishi, on the cover. Eye candy aside it’s a pretty good issue — lots of articles about getting strong! I love this quote from Jimmy Peña’s article “Doorway to Strength”:

While lifting superhuman weights may not be as high on your list as building muscle size, at one point or another you may decide to focus solely on enhancing pure, bar-bending brute strength… If that’s the case, follow us down the path only the strong have taken. Here’s the door. And no, it’s not stuck — it’s just heavy.

Missing

Where oh where could my combination lock be? It’s in none of the usual places, and none of the unusual ones either. How provoking.

Rosencrantz is Dead

Guildenstern is just sleeping.

Things I Like: Part 4 of 5

Occasionally my inner Martha Stewart surfaces and I’m overwhelmed by a compulsion to indulge in the barbaric practice of covering any and every unadorned surface with twee embellishments. But one must be strong and resist these unhealthy and unnatural desires! I turn instead to one of the oldest and noblest art forms: gift wrapping. Embellish away — rather than cluttering every inch of available space in the world, your efforts will find their way to the dustbin.

I wrapped this gift in brown paper and decorated it with a hand-carved rubber stamp. Cute!

Things I Like: Part 3 of 5

Cold green tea with a splash of apple juice and a slice of lemon, served in my lucky Highland cow mug. I haven’t any particular need for good luck today but it might come in handy! This is delicious and refreshing — perfect for summer.

Things I Like: Part 2 of 5

I love white dogs.

Truth be told, it’s very rare that I meet a dog I don’t like. But white dogs occupy an extra-special space in my heart. Right next to the extra-special places reserved for bloodhounds, sporty-looking sighthounds, roly-poly puppies of any variety, most any member of the mastiff family, poodles, and English pointers. My parents’ dog, Guildenstern, has an extra-special spot of his own too. How could he not?

What a babe. Ten bucks says he’s asleep right now! He spends his waking hours devising new ways to be cute. Unsurprisingly, he’s got my parents wrapped around his little dew claw. Speaking of Gil, here’s a droll e-mail my mother sent me about an encounter on a recent walk:

… a little girl shouted, “Daddy, Daddy, look at that gorgeous dog!” According to your father, Gil blushed, but I wouldn’t put too much faith in that part of the story.

Things I Like: Part 1 of 5

What a horrid, dreary, rainy Monday! To inject a little cheer into a gloomy day, these notebooks from Cartolina are just the thing. I use them to record my workouts — they’re the perfect size, unlined, and the covers are awfully pretty. I’ve made a collage of my favourites below. The dog-eared ones I’ve filled are a tangible representation of the hard work I’ve done in the gym, but the pristine new ones gently remind me that I’ll never be big or strong enough.

I’ve decided to share five things that I really like this week. As the officially (self-) appointed Arbiter of Taste, I suggest that you should really like them too!

How to Get Strong

If at first you don’t succeed…

– try, try, try, try again and again and again and again. But try harder next time!

What Would Hitler Wear?

A few days ago I picked up a copy of Argyle Magazine in my physiotherapist’s waiting room. It’s a twee “lifestyle quarterly” for rich people the Aryan master race, apparently. I took a picture of the cover with my cell phone:

“Triumph of the Will: Business Suits for the New Economy” — really? Really really? As in the 1935 Nazi propaganda film “Triumph of the Will” directed by Leni Riefenstahl? Apparently so.

Argyle Magazine offers the final solution to your wardrobe quandary: razor-sharp tailoring! The accompanying photograph replicates the visual style of the Riefenstahl film so exactly that it could practically be mistaken for a still from the original. I read a book about Leni Riefenstahl last year and I recognize that she made important innovations as a filmmaker. But I think it’s tasteless to appropriate Nazi iconography to push “the powersuit for the modern day”. As long as similar atrocities are occurring in the world, and as a sign of respect for the victims of the Holocaust, we shouldn’t minimize the importance of WWII by borrowing from a Nazi propaganda film as a shock tactic to sell more lifestyle magazines.

Sorry to preach. Here’s a picture I took of my parents’ dog. He’s a piano virtuoso!

Lavender, Yellow, Turquoise, and Black All Over

Do you like my new cow skull? It’s hung in the living room over the couch. I painted it so it would look less like it belongs on a ranch, but I’m not sure my Harlequin-inspired makeover was actually much of an improvement. Could I have picked a worse colour scheme? It looks as though Easter threw up on it. It would look fantastic in a nursery though. Maybe I’ll hang it over the puppy’s bed when I get him in the fall. Of course it might give him little puppy-sized nightmares…

A hot babe in a state of partial undress has the favorable effect of distracting the eye from my latest failure in interior decoration though, non?